Annette Hanshaw: Lovable and Sweet
Living Era
Annette Hanshaw was the singer who really got me into 1920s music. Some performers from the 1920s sound odd or shrill to modern ears, although over time you get used to them. It took me a little while to get used to Helen Kane, and I'm still not over-keen on Gertrude Lawrence or Adele Astaire (although that may be because they both have a very stagey singing style). Annette's voice is instantly accessible, though, in the same way that Ruth Etting's is. It's not as high-pitched as the voices of many singers of her era, and sounds natural and engaging. She sang for roughly a decade, retiring in her mid-20s to marry her manager.
Lovable and Sweet is a compilation of some of Hanshaw's best work, and it's great. You can really hear the warmth and personality in her singing. (She wasn't billed as "The Personality Girl" for nothing.) When she sings "Ain't He Sweet?", you can imagine her nudging her parents and whispering behind her hand. In the second verse of "You Wouldn't Fool Me, Would You?" she does a superb imitation of her friend Helen Kane. Hanshaw worked with some of the best jazz musicians of her day, and several of the songs on this album are outstanding for this reason. "Nothing", in particular, is excellent.
The sound quality on this disc isn't always brilliant - it's obvious at some points that the CD has been taken from old recordings - but that's really due to the age and quality of the original recordings, not because of shoddy transfer. I really love this CD. It's light, bright and happy, and it covers the mid 1920s to very early 1930s, exactly the time I like best!
Just William
BBC
ISBN 0-563-47821-7
Written by Richmal Crompton, read by Martin Jarvis
Just William brings back some very happy memories for me, mostly of crying with laughter. These are tales of the incorrigible William Brown, schoolboy and all-round nuisance. Somehow the television programmes based on the books never seem to capture the essence of the William stories, but Martin Jarvis' readings of them bring Crompton's dry, ironic prose to the fore. He manages to convey the boyish surliness of William and his friends, Mrs. Brown's weary patience and the sugary steel of Violet Elizabeth Bott.
The stories were written for children but, like the very best children's books, from the Famous Five to Harry Potter, they hold an irresistable attraction for grown-ups too. I'd feared that they would have lost some of their sparkle for me over they years but no, they're still hilarious. They have been abridged, but the essential William magic is still there. There are also some lovely touches that date the stories without aging them - Violet Elizabeth's attempts to describe a nightclub to William include the facts that there has to be a cabaret, and there's always a raid by the police at a nightclub. As for The Christmas Truce, where William, Ginger, Douglas and Henry have to endure Chritmas parties with the Hubert Laneites… you just know it's all going to end in mischief!
